Let's discuss Quickness and Alacrity.

[Yasai.3549]

I think we've gotten to a stage in game balance right now where Quickness and Alacrity are treated like "essential boons" and if a class is unable to provide them, they are considered with less priority for content, at least that's the picture Anet is trying to paint when they decided to give every Profession the ability to provide Quick or Alac. I think this is a huge problem when specs and builds are giving up core identifying playstyles, traits or unique capabilities in order to fit the mold of an "Essential boon giver" 

I feel like there needs to be a serious discussion regarding how this affects the game overall. Personally, I feel that these two boons and the focus on revamping specs to provide them is a ridiculous and unhealthy obsession. 

 

I'll just kick off the discussion with a suggestion of mine: 

1. Quick and Alac are removed entirely as player given boons. 

2. Introduce a new 6 Rune set which will be the new "meta DPS set". Its 6 set effect is speed up all skill casting (quickness essentially). Stats will have a Condi variant and a Power variant. 

3. Introduce a new 6 Rune which will be the new  "meta Healer set". Its 6 set effect is Healing allies will reduce their cooldowns by 2seconds. 1second internal cooldown per player. Stats will feature Healing Power. 

 

Edited June 11, 2023 by Yasai.3549

[Zok.4956]

9 minutes ago, Yasai.3549 said:

I feel like there needs to be a serious discussion regarding how this affects the game overall. Personally, I feel that these two boons and the focus on revamping specs to provide them is a ridiculous and unhealthy obsession. 

I agree. 

 

11 minutes ago, Yasai.3549 said:

1. Quick and Alac are removed entirely as player given boons. 

2. Introduce a new 6 Rune set which will be the new "meta DPS set". Its 6 set effect is speed up all skill casting (quickness essentially). Stats will have a Condi variant and a Power variant. 

3. Introduce a new 6 Rune which will be the new  "meta Healer set". Its 6 set effect is Healing allies will reduce their cooldowns by 2seconds. 1second internal cooldown per player. Stats will feature Healing Power. 

I would prefer option 1. Quick and Alac are removed as player given boons. They are just used as a permanent DPS increase/power creep and  if Anet wants their effect Anet could just increase the baseline.

I think all three options above would be better than the direction the developers are planning.

[Yasai.3549]

14 minutes ago, Zok.4956 said:

I agree. 

 

I would prefer option 1. Quick and Alac are removed as player given boons. They are just used as a permanent DPS increase/power creep and  if Anet wants their effect Anet could just increase the baseline.

I think all three options above would be better than the direction the developers are planning.

Another idea is that they could also explore designing encounters that "reward" the players with Quick and Alac.

For example if a Defiant boss has been broken, all players who are in combat with it gain a boost of Quick and Alac to quickly punish the boss. I think this would also be an effective way to encourage players to "do the boss correctly" so to speak. 

Edited June 11, 2023 by Yasai.3549

[Zephire.8049]

I'm incredibly in favour of removing one or both from the game. They went from "Wouldn't it be cool if we had this?" to "These are incredibly powerful boons so you want to time them for bursts" to "Every class should have access to one or both." These days, content is designed under the assumption that people will have those buffs for a majority time even in open world content which makes it overly punishing when that's not the case. GW2 has some great encounters but they've made so much HP sponges now because otherwise alac+quickness makes the encounter "go too fast" or whatever their justification is.

That's not fun.

It's also a balance nightmare that both them and players have been dealing with since HoT as they have to find a point in skills where it's not terrible without alac+quickness but not OP with them, on top of finding more and more ways to give one or both to different classes.

Removing them would be a big change and not without a painful transition period, but I think they need to be removed for the long-term health of the game and would allow the encounters design teams more freedom in what they do and free up the balance team to focus on sore points instead of finding a way so X class can bring alac/quickness and ignoring everything else about it, even skills that have been bugged for years.

[Grand Marshal.4098]

Specs no longer being designed with unique roles in mind.

Only priority is where to squeeze an alac or quickness trait.

And what do unique professions and specs get? Just nerfs.

WvW SpB, the boonstrip class, will be annihilated with this patch, but hey ALAC BLADESWORN or QUICKNESS ZERKER.

Same kitten happened with scrapper and superspeed and how that boring meta existed cause reliance on superspeed was just like quick and alac.

[Felices Bladewing.3914]

quickness and alac as boons are ok, but the application needs to be harder than just swap a talent and do your rotation, also it should be boons designed to give damage spikes to a fight or encounter, not to have it permanently. Anet should get rid of concentration as a stat, so instead of focusing on boons and their application maybe players can now focus on the game itself

[Bunbury.8472]

just cut to the chase & give perma quick & alac whenever you are in a party of squad in PvE

its the goal they have in mind, so they should just make it a feature of being in a party or squad. if you need the boons for party or squad content, & they have to be apparently applied in a way that doesn’t take up an entire utility bar, or take lots of effort to upkeep- ie passive boon application. then what the heck, just roll the boons into the party/squad mechanic then everyone can play what they want & not have to do anything to keep the boons up.

[Hashberry.4510]

No doubt we thrash around with these twisted specs for the rest of the game.

[rotten.9753]

35 minutes ago, Felices Bladewing.3914 said:

quickness and alac as boons are ok, but the application needs to be harder than just swap a talent and do your rotation, also it should be boons designed to give damage spikes to a fight or encounter, not to have it permanently. Anet should get rid of concentration as a stat, so instead of focusing on boons and their application maybe players can now focus on the game itself

What would that change? Boss encounters do not really have burst phases, especially new strikes with large health pools. You would use them on cooldown and especially at the start because that's when your damage is the highest.

[rotten.9753]

36 minutes ago, Bunbury.8472 said:

just cut to the chase & give perma quick & alac whenever you are in a party of squad in PvE

its the goal they have in mind, so they should just make it a feature of being in a party or squad. if you need the boons for party or squad content, & they have to be apparently applied in a way that doesn’t take up an entire utility bar, or take lots of effort to upkeep- ie passive boon application. then what the heck, just roll the boons into the party/squad mechanic then everyone can play what they want & not have to do anything to keep the boons up.

Once we are at it, let's remove all boons. Might and fury brings as much dps increase as quick and alac

[Lenmar.1970]

9 minutes ago, rotten.9753 said:

Once we are at it, let's remove all boons. Might and fury brings as much dps increase as quick and alac

Well why not... if everything else has to be sacrified on the altar of shared boons, maybe they should be only self mechanics..  and that's the end of power creep at the same time 😀

Everyone should be happy, no ? 😉

[rotten.9753]

3 minutes ago, Lenmar.1970 said:

Well why not... if everything else has to be sacrified on the altar of shared boons, maybe they should be only self mechanics..  and that's the end of power creep at the same time 😀

Everyone should be happy, no ? 😉

Unironically, yes. Seems like this is the new rage to complain about boons and their influence on combat.

[Noodle Ant.1605]

i remember anet stating the whole issue with quick/alac is that not having them feels bad because they dramatically change how the game feels. its not like having 0 might/0 vuln/no fury - you just do less dmg/dont crit, but youre still going to press buttons exactly the same way as if you had might/vuln/fury. many players literally dont seem care about might/vuln so long as they have quick/alac first despite having similar output

i cant remember if anet themselves admitted that they had two options - make permaquick/alac the standard, or not have it at all. obviously they went for the first option, and you can bet that theyll stick to their guns until theyre forced to change it. so any means to make (group) quick/alac temporary/too much effort to get is likely not an option, either they stay or they go

[Joxer.6024]

i seem to recall that it was early WOW...maybe...that you gained  boons from foods\etc. Healers would us healing ones and dps dps ones and tank as well, was never something you specced into full time. I could be wrong?

[Joxer.6024]

2 minutes ago, Noodle Ant.1605 said:

i remember anet stating the whole issue with quick/alac is that not having them feels bad because they dramatically change how the game feels. its not like having 0 might/0 vuln/no fury - you just do less dmg/dont crit, but youre still going to press buttons exactly the same way as if you had might/vuln/fury. many players literally dont seem care about might/vuln so long as they have quick/alac first despite having similar output

i cant remember if anet themselves admitted that they had two options - make permaquick/alac the standard, or not have it at all. obviously they went for the first option, and you can bet that theyll stick to their guns until theyre forced to change it. so any means to make (group) quick/alac temporary/too much effort to get is likely not an option, either they stay or they go

so true! seems like every raid is awlays asking for "alac or quick", never anything else. It has become kinda sad that the whole focus is now on 2 boons.

Edited June 11, 2023 by Joxer.6024

[Felices Bladewing.3914]

1 hour ago, rotten.9753 said:

What would that change? Boss encounters do not really have burst phases, especially new strikes with large health pools. You would use them on cooldown and especially at the start because that's when your damage is the highest.

there are also enough „burst phases“ in terms of the d-bar. having the boon permanently is like giving it away passively or even remove it and make it baseline, restricting it to specific times will create a skill ceiling where timing and coordination can make a difference.

Also same is true not only in terms of pve, i also take that approach into competitive, its ok to have those boon if you are fighting the first person but than you should run out of steam. Comp is overflowing with boons anyway, anet should bring reaction and counterplay back and make boons situational instead of having them active all the time.

To this day I don’t even understand the existence of fury, either give 20/25% baseline or let it have more impact than just crit change. Right now it is just weird to equip gear for power builds.

[Xenesis.6389]

They should either be made permanent baseline, or removed. All this dancing around butchering and destroying specs and metas over trying to make the applications of them come from multiple sources so they can have 100% uptime is ridiculous. Make them baseline and move on to other aspects of combat.

[KnightofPhoenix.3679]

If they wanted to make quickness available for everyone (not saying they don't), then it's even more baffling to me why they would axe Strider's Defense, which is one of the main ways a Ranger gets quickness innately and that synergizes well with Soulbeast's Essence of Speed.  

It rewarded evasion with quickness so it's not like it was easy or automatic. 

Strider's Defense was unique and fun.  Now it's just more might, which really wasn't needed (I get 25 might very easily without it). 

Edited June 11, 2023 by KnightofPhoenix.3679

[rotten.9753]

1 hour ago, Felices Bladewing.3914 said:

there are also enough „burst phases“ in terms of the d-bar. having the boon permanently is like giving it away passively or even remove it and make it baseline, restricting it to specific times will create a skill ceiling where timing and coordination can make a difference.

I can't wait for complaints about that - that my burst damage depends on another player.

[Adonaj.7932]

Quick and alac should be removed from the game entirely. Devs are killing the game trying to balance it around quick and alac.

[Acheron.1580]

If anything this patch has kind of highlighted that combat in this game has bad bones. Honestly why not get rid of / fold in baseline might, fury, alacrity and quickness? They are clearly the baseline for snowcrows testing and Anet design (CMs and Soo-wan meta come to mind).  You can't just remove any of them because then you would need to readjust everything that was built with them as benchmarkers in mind, and the power creep they created is abundantly clear between pre/post HoT. So the only option is to fold them in (Raids are a great example, comparing how hard they were on release vs. now, as well as the fact that Chrono was MANDATORY when they were introduced because they were the sole source of Alac ).

So let's talk folding them in. You now have a dead-ish stat (concentration) and all the gear that goes with it. Rather than try to balance ranged vs melee, they simply forced a meta where you had to stack for buffs, and with changes that would have to be revisited. Everything they built with the current meta in mind would (theoretically) be easier since now you would need 1 less boon support per group freeing up a slot for more straight dps. So either you need to readjust CMs or just accept they are more accessible. They would need to actually be creative and revisit all classes and clean up garbage in traits that add quickness and alacrity, and in the extreme version also might and fury, and we can already see how well they handle that.

In reality this is just the game now, since it would be work to do otherwise and Anet has been historically pretty bad at wanting to put in work. There are bugs from 8 years ago that still linger in this game from when the content was first released (and a slew of things you just go "well its been like that for years"). The content (IMO) from the end of IBS on has been really disappointing (I love the look and atmosphere of EoD but I never want to actually be there), every balance patch has felt rather tone deaf with suggestions that would be obviously problematic if they understood the classes at all (mechanically speaking, like the new chronomancer applications of quick and alac. Phantasms are a good way to tie that in in theory, but in practice what a nightmare for pvp/wvw, and no prebuffing allowed).

Got worked up, went on a tangent there. Point is they've shot themselves in the foot by leaning so hard into Alacrity and Quickness and let it fester so long that they've essentially backed themselves into a corner and now that it's hit its end game, the players get to suffer for it.

In my opinion, quickness should be a personal "follow-up" style buff, something you hit when you want your next attack to be sped up. Alacrity should just be gone and abilities adjusted accordingly. They've been demonstrating they can do that already with all the removal of traits that affect CDs.

Edited June 11, 2023 by Acheron.1580
Suggestion at end rather than just straight complaining

[Flapjackson.1596]

Boons are too powerful to ignore but are as interesting as food buffs, with the added negative of being tedious to maintain. At least food buffs are a fire and forget for 30 min to an hour. 

They are oppressive, boring, and have ruined the focus of the game balance. The combat of the game should be focused on the individual, on the unique aspects of nine professions and their specializations. The damage, the healing, and the utility should be what makes each build shine. Instead we live in this world where everything is hyper-fixated on can you give the group X or Y buff permanently. We are glorified jade protocols. It is insane that the devs would not only be comfortable with this but would double down.

[Yasai.3549]

10 minutes ago, Acheron.1580 said:

Got worked up, went on a tangent there. Point is they've shot themselves in the foot by leaning so hard into Alacrity and Quickness and let it fester so long that they've essentially backed themselves into a corner and now that it's hit its end game, the players get to suffer for it.

Boons in this game is honestly bad for balance but that's not the point of this entire thread, it's the fact that Anet is choosing to flip the table just so that Profession can provided either one of the key boons.

That's a balance philosophy which no one understands which leads me to ask: should we just remove these two stupid boons/make them baseline because it's obvious the dev team has reached a conclusion that this is the only way that they can ensure that every Profession has an opportunity. There's so many ways to achieve profession play-rate balance in content but they chose the one path which will destroy so many unique builds and playstyles. All because of 2 stupid boons. 

Don't even get me started on the LAYERS of problems that homogenizing every Profession to be able to Quick/Alac bring. People will start cherry picking which classes has better uptime, better DPS, better this better that. This is a problem that will never end if the balance philosophy does not change. Same as how they had to utterly gut Chrono to de-meta it, this will be the future of Gw2 class balance. 

Edited June 11, 2023 by Yasai.3549

[Acheron.1580]

11 minutes ago, Yasai.3549 said:

Boons in this game is honestly bad for balance but that's not the point of this entire thread, it's the fact that Anet is choosing to flip the table just so that Profession can provided either one of the key boons.

That's a balance philosophy which no one understands which leads me to ask: should we just remove these two stupid boons/make them baseline because it's obvious the dev team has reached a conclusion that this is the only way that they can ensure that every Profession has an opportunity. 

There's so many ways to achieve profession play-rate balance in content but they chose the one path which will destroy so many unique builds and playstyles. All because of 2 stupid boons. 

And I 100% agree with you. None of these changes are good, but the obvious root of the problem is Quickness and Alacrity. The game philosophy at the start was "no holy trinity" but in irony it's same kitten different name. Instead of tank/healer/dps, its Boon support 1 / boon support 2 / dps, with one of the boon supports also being healer and sometimes also the tank. The difference is I think some people genuinely like playing healers and tanks. I just don't think there's anything particularly fun about playing "boon person B".

Sorry tangent again, they would need to go back to basics, all the way back to the beginning and fish out the identities of each class, rebuild them (and hopefully not destroy them like this patch will do), and solidify them while also removing alac and quickness traits. I knew what would happen to heal scourge if it got alacrity and I was 100% right, because the only way to balance that would be to seriously harm the core since blood was such a solid identity for healing more than the scourge class itself was.

I also posted this in the main balance patch thread, it was just smarter to make it it's own thing:

 

Edited June 11, 2023 by Acheron.1580
Link

[Greyrat.2378]

Remove them/make them baseline.

Will it ever happen? Most likely no.

They still clearly have no set direction of what this game should be about, and current situation is the direct evidence of it. 

If the devs state that it feels bad to play without them, that should be indication that there is something wrong with your game and the way you design these encounters.
Making the boons almost mandatory to have is not the way to go tbh.

Solution? Time to move on I guess (at least in my case).

Their current design philosophy is extremely short sighted with this balancing around boon uptime, actively preventing them from focusing on some more interesting things, and personally I am just tired of this crap.